Today's modern telephone systems provide individuals and businesses with a variety of customized calling package plans and services. Many features such as call waiting, call-forwarding, three-way calling and the like have been provided. The three-way call has been utilized when a user needs to simultaneously communicate with more than one party. Conventionally, a three-way call may be initiated by a call originating party calling two other parties to participate in the three-way call. For instance, a three-way call is made through the call originating party calling a second attending party, pressing a flash button (or depressing a switch hook) on a telephone, then calling a third attending party, and pressing a flash button or a connect button. At this point, the three-way call has been established and each of the three parties can converse with each other. Three-way calling is often also referred to as a caller-originated conference call or a multi-way call.
Generally, the charges for the three-way call are levied solely on the originating party. A problem occurs when the call originating party desires to drop out of the three-way call or does not want to continue to pay the call charges. If one of the participating parties desires to become a new originating party, then that party must establish a new connection if the other participating parties desire to continue the conversation. However, establishing a new connection may be time consuming since it requires the new originating party to provide the telephone numbers of all other participating parties. Often, the new originating party may not have telephone numbers of the participating parties. Further, the important multi-way call may be delayed until the new connection is established. In addition, new call connection charges may be incurred in addition to the standard line usage charges.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a method and system for altering an administrator of the multi-way call connection so that the multi-way call can be maintained even after the originating party drops out or declines to continue to pay the charges. It would be also desirable to provide a method and system that could transfer billing responsibility and delegation of control of the multi-way call connection from the originating party to the new administrator.